Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  They answered the questions Constable McGarrity put to them, but always first looking one at the other. Aye, Callie's father and Martha's mother were away, aye they had left together, no, they had no said why but they would be back today or tomorrow. They had left enough firewood and food for the girls, who were to do their chores and milk the cow and goats—at this they looked at each other in great alarm, until the constable assured them that the livestock had been cared for—and not speak to anyone in the village about family business.

  At that both girls began to weep again, quietly, holding hands in such a touching way that I should have liked to weep myself.

  Then the constable asked about Mrs. Fiddler and Martha broke out in great racking sobs that shook her shoulders and would not cease even though Elizabeth rocked her and spoke calm words. And this was strange, of course, because it is Callie who suffered the greater loss, but she sat still-faced and like an old woman who has seen so much in a hard life that she has no more tears left to shed.

  No matter how the question was put to them, by Elizabeth or the constable, neither of them had even a word to say that shed any light on the circumstances of Mrs. Fiddler's death, and indeed it seemed to me that with every passing minute they were more and more distant. This troubled Mr. McGarrity and indeed I, too, had the idea that they knew more or suspected more than they cared to say. Later I had a moment alone with your mother and I asked her what he might be thinking, but she only shook her head and begged not to be asked, as she could not say such terrible things aloud without evidence. Which proves once again what an unusual and thoughtful woman your mother is, for no one else in the village (except, of course, Mr. McGarrity himself) scrupled to say exactly what they thought, and that in a loud voice.

  All day long men were gathered in the trading post, suggesting more and more outlandish scenarios and murder plots, which stopped only because the Ratz boys came in to say that Mr. Wilde's sleigh was just coming into the village and seemed to be headed for the millhouse.

  And as it turns out, the younger widow Kuick was with him, but she had come back to Paradise as Mrs. Wilde, for they had been married the day before in Johnstown in front of the magistrate, and had the marriage lines as proof. I suppose this would have been a gey great scandal even without the discovery of Mrs. Fiddler's murder—the women in the village hold a verra low opinion of Jemima's manner of getting husbands, I'm told—but taken together you might have thought Benedict Arnold had come to Paradise, such outrage was there among the villagers.

  Someone had set the meetinghouse bell to ringing and everyone came running, the men gathering around the sleigh. And that is how I saw them first, the bright red sleigh in the middle of a crowd. There was a great shouting of questions and threats and promises of damnation.

  Mrs. Kuick—Mrs. Wilde, now—looked curiously untouched by it all, and even pleased, like a cat let out after being closed up in the buttery all night. She sat in the sleigh with her hands crossed in her lap and looked over the faces turned up to her as she might have looked at a field full of crows. As if the questions they were asking—the accusations they threw in her face—were irritations only, and not to be taken seriously. To my mind this makes her either smug in her innocence, or arrogant and the worst kind of heartless wretch, who could do murder and shrug it off so easily.

  Her new husband was far less composed. The news of Mrs. Fiddler's death shook him so that I thought at first he might faint. But then the constable claimed both of them and took them into the trading post. As there is room in the jail for only one, Nicholas is being held there while Jemima is locked up in the cabin where your old teacher Mr. Oak once lived, with a guard at the door and the shutters nailed closed. She would have been allowed visitors, but none went to her, not even her own daughter.

  The Wildes were charged with two counts of murder, and now the whole village waits impatiently for the judge to come through on his circuit. It is his job to decide whether they must both be tried, or, as most in the village have decided, Jemima alone is guilty of these terrible crimes. Mrs. McGarrity explained it to me thus: Jemima wanted what she wanted, and the two women who stood in the way—both of whom she hated for years—are both dead.

  And indeed it seems that Mr. Wilde cannot have had a hand in either death, for even Mrs. Fiddler's sons say openly that Nicholas and his daughter were in Johnstown at the time of their mother's disappearance.

  In all of this it seems that the wee lasses suffer the greatest injury. The women in the village ask each other again and again what is to become of them, too young still to go into service or fend for the family holdings, and without means or family to take them in.

  Perhaps the one good thing to come of all of this sad business has to do with your sister, who seemed determined never to leave Lake in the Clouds again. The only time she came to the village was to examine Mrs. Fiddler's remains and write a report, for she is the only trained physician in the village now. Otherwise she stayed at home and cared to hear nothing about the turmoil. Then, a few days ago while Curiosity and Ethan were with us for dinner, the subject of the lasses and what would become of them was raised and for the first time Hannah seemed to be paying attention.

  And she said, quite calmly and in a tone that was almost normal, but the girls must come to live in the doctor's house, don't you think, Curiosity?

  The surprise in the room was almost comical, and if the subject matter had not been so very serious someone might have laughed. I was certainly in danger of it.

  Ethan recovered first and said what a fine idea, it would do them all no end of good to fill up the empty house with little girls. Of course we have not yet had the reading of the doctor's will, and your father seems to fear that there might be some trick there that would make a shambles of such plans.

  For my part I will stay at Lake in the Clouds with your parents, whom I have come to love and respect as my own. When your brother comes back to make a bride of me he will find me here, as we agreed.

  This is a very long letter and one I know must cause you great pain and distress. I hardly know how to end it, for anything I might put down now must sound trite. The village waits impatiently for Mr. O'Brien, a strange thing, I am told, for while he is the circuit judge he is also the tax collector and most go out of their way to avoid him. When he is come and the matter is settled, I will write to you again with whatever news there may be.

  In the meantime, I beg you to turn to your brother for comfort. He is sometimes too strict (I have written him a stern letter reminding him that you are not a child, and your private business is none of his concern). He is also overly fond of teasing, but in times of trouble you will find out now how truly devoted he is to you and how very much he cares for your well-being and happiness.

  I do pledge that I will do my best—with your little brother's help—to keep your good parents in high spirits.

  Your cousin and friend and soon-to-be sister,

  Jennet Scott, once of Carryck

  Chapter 16

  In the first of the new year the talk in the village revolved around two separate but equally interesting events. The first was the reading of Dr. Todd's last will and testament. The second, even more exciting to the imagination, was the coming of the circuit judge who would—as common wisdom decreed—listen to the evidence and then order Jemima to be strung up for the murder of Cookie Fiddler and Dolly Wilde.

  Then Mr. Bennett, who had done them such good service over the years, did yet another by announcing straight off that only concerned parties would be invited to the reading of the doctor's will. Nathaniel was glad of it, first and foremost for Hannah's sake; she was unsteady still, sleepy and inward turned. She reminded him of a woman who has given birth for the first time: astounded that life should go on just as it always had, when everything of real importance had shifted so absolutely.

  Nathaniel had lost children of his own, but there had been others nearby to share that burden. His mother, the first and second times, and the
n Elizabeth. Hannah had been alone in every way. He hated to think of it, not so much for the loss of the boy—a grandson he had never seen and could hardly imagine—but because he had gone about his business unthinking, unknowing, day by day, while his daughter had suffered.

  But there she was, well fed and healthy in body if still wounded in heart and soul. There was work for her to do, work she thought she didn't want, but Nathaniel knew her better; it was the practice of medicine that would help her put the shadow lands behind her. Richard Todd had seen that, too, and acted on it, and Nathaniel knew that no matter what harm Todd had done in his life, he must forgive him everything for this last act of understanding and generosity and healing.

  Unless, of course, there was something else in the will they weren't expecting. A tingling at the base of his neck gave Nathaniel the feeling that Richard Todd wasn't done with them yet. Leave it to the man to figure out how to make people dance to his tune from the grave itself.

  On the way down the mountain Nathaniel said as much to his wife, who bit back a surprised smile and then clucked at him, as she did at a child who made much of a small scratch. Any other time she would have taken the chance to argue with him about this, but these days Elizabeth was short-spoken and distant, and the reason was no mystery: they hadn't had word from Daniel or Blue-Jay in a month.

  That was no time at all, of course. A man living rough in the bush might not have a chance to put pen to paper for weeks or months, even if there was a way to send a letter once it got written. He had told Elizabeth as much at the very beginning; she had nodded and smiled and refused to consider the possibility that her son would be so far away, unreachable, unknowable. That he might die without her permission or knowledge or tears.

  Right now there was nothing they could do for Daniel or Blue-Jay, but Hannah was here. The urge to stay clear of the reading of Richard Todd's will wasn't near as strong as the need to be close by if his daughter needed him.

  The afternoon was already sliding toward dusk when they were finally settled in the doctor's parlor with the door closed. Bump was sitting near the windows and Nathaniel perched on a stool next to him, where he could keep track of Elizabeth and Hannah and still watch for anybody who might approach the house from the front.

  “You expecting an ambush?” Bump said, pulling Nathaniel out of his thoughts. “Richard's good and gone, never fear.”

  And he was right: some part of Nathaniel was having trouble believing that Richard was dead. It would be easy enough to convince himself. He could go out to the woodshed and look at the body in its fine carved coffin, brought all the way from Johnstown some months ago, another dying-man's fancy. The body would be frozen solid as deer hung in a tree, sunken in on itself with no more personality than any cut of meat. But Nathaniel would recognize Richard Todd by the bones in his face and by his hands, broad across the knuckles, splayed thumbs, the deeply scarred palm that Nathaniel was responsible for. That summer day in the endless forests when they had shed each other's blood. For Elizabeth, for land, for everything important in the world.

  Nathaniel looked at his own hands where they rested on his knees and saw the years in them: a certain looseness in the skin, the knuckle joints a little swollen with the cold and work and time flowing by.

  “It won't be long,” Bump said. As if it were the hour spent here that worried him rather than the weight of days he felt on his shoulders.

  Mr. Bennett cleared his throat and began to speak in his quiet, steady voice as he explained the ways of the law and what the government had to say about death and land and money, once again sticking its nose in where it was neither needed nor wanted.

  Ethan, it turned out to nobody's surprise, was Richard's executor, which meant that he had the say of how things were to be done after the lawyer packed his bags and went back to Johnstown. A sensible decision on Richard's part, as Ethan was as sober minded a young man as could be found anywhere, and unimpressed by money.

  Because, Nathaniel reminded himself as he looked around the comfortable parlor with its brocade and silk and velvet, polished silver and brass, glass and crystal and oil paintings on the wall—some of them Richard's own work from long ago, in the years he had tried to make himself into somebody he could never be—Ethan Middleton had never been without money and would never know what it was like to be hungry.

  And still Elizabeth had worried about the boy every day of his life. Last night, before she fell asleep she said, “It is not good for him to be so much alone with his books.” She shifted a little, embarrassed and rightly so, for as a young woman her family had said just the same thing of her.

  Nathaniel was so wound up in his thoughts that he missed much of the first part of the will, but one phrase caught his attention, for in it he heard Richard's voice as clearly as if he had taken over the elderly lawyer's portly body to speak his mind one last time.

  . . . my soul into the hands of the Almighty that he might do with it as He deems fit, and may He have mercy on an Unrepentant and Enthusiastic Sinner. Second, my ruin of a body sore abused I leave to Dr. Hannah Bonner, Physician, that it might prove some use to the science of anatomy and autopsy.

  Curiosity shifted uneasily at this bit of godlessness but Hannah herself seemed unmoved, and maybe, Nathaniel thought, studying his daughter closely, a little amused. The next paragraph took the half-smile from her face.

  . . . unto said physician, my student, Hannah Bonner, my medical tools, books, supplies, and research materials of all kinds, and with them I pass into her able hands my medical practice in the village of Paradise. Further to Hannah Bonner I bequeath my laboratory and the parcel of land on which it stands.

  They knew about this already, from Richard's own mouth, and still Nathaniel's pulse ratcheted up a notch to hear it put out there for the world to know. It was good and right and generous and still some part of Nathaniel wished it undone. In death Todd had found a way to tie the girl to him, something that he had wanted since the day she was born.

  The next part of the will was like listening to Elizabeth read from one of Swift's stories, odd ideas and pictures all woven together to present a new view of the world.

  To Curiosity—a freed black woman—Todd had left the house and farm and enough money to maintain them and herself in thin years. It was a bequest that might not hold up in a court of law if challenged, but it would not be, not by anyone in this room. To Curiosity's surviving daughter and granddaughters he left all of Kitty's clothes and shoes and trinkets, and to Joshua Hench and his son, whatever chemicals and materials they wanted from the laboratory, along with an annual stipend of twenty dollars to purchase what they needed to make firecrackers. If the boy showed an interest, there was money for him to go study at the African Free School in New-York City. At this Curiosity sat up very straight and still; he had managed to surprise even her.

  Mr. Bennett paused to clear his throat and shuffle, a little nervously, through the papers before him. The whole room sat forward a little, curious and unsettled, but most of all intrigued.

  “‘To Elizabeth Middleton Bonner,'” he read, his voice hoarse now. “‘I hereby bequeath any books from my library that she might like to have, my mule Horace (for they are well suited to each other in temperament), and the sum of five hundred dollars with which to have a schoolhouse built, and further with it a parcel of land of her choosing so long as it is in the village proper. Also to Mrs. Bonner I bequeath an annual sum of one hundred dollars for the maintenance and running of the school and for monies to hire a teacher, for the day she decides she has had enough of teaching. These bequests I make in thanks for the kindnesses she showed my dear departed wife, and in everlasting gratitude for the fact that Mrs. Bonner once broke her promise to marry me.'”

  There was a sniffling in the room and a muffled laugh, from Curiosity and then Elizabeth herself. Even Hannah was smiling, truly smiling, which Nathaniel supposed must be a good thing.

  Richard Todd had left Elizabeth the one thing she really needed an
d wanted—freedom and means to do as she wished without depriving the village of a school—but in such terms that it would pain her to accept them.

  Mr. Bennett was studying them over the edge of his papers, his clear brown eyes troubled.

  “If you will bear with me,” he said. “Please let me read this next section before you make any comments—” He cleared his throat. “You will understand soon enough.”

  “‘To my mother's brother, my beloved uncle Cornelius Bump,'” Mr. Bennett read, and then stopped to look around the room, as if he expected everyone to rise up in one voice after this strange announcement.

  For it was strange, the strangest thing to be said so far today. Cornelius Bump was Richard Todd's uncle. Richard might have claimed to be the president or the king of England with less reaction, for Nathaniel had known Todd all of his life and Bump for almost as long, and the connection had never even occurred to him.

  The shock rocked through the room even as the lawyer read on, steady as a plough in well-turned earth. The thoughts going through Nathaniel's mind were too varied and quick to be pinned down, but one part of him noted two things: Bump seemed completely unworried by this revelation, while Curiosity looked embarrassed. As well she should, Nathaniel thought. For keeping this to herself for so many years. He remembered just then that Falling-Day, who had been his mother-in-law, had given Curiosity a Kahnyen'kehàka name many years ago: She-Who-Keeps-Silent.

  Mr. Bennett pushed on, reading out the rest of it. To Cornelius Bump, Richard had left a thousand acres of virgin timberland, for him to do with as he wished, another five thousand dollars for his own use, and finally a request: that he take the same amount of money with him and find Richard's brother, who had lived all his life among the Mohawk. If he was not able to find that brother or any of his family, he was free to do with the bequest as he saw fit.